by René Lavanchy
Tory billionaire donor Lord Ashcroft could finally be forced to declare whether he is a tax exile after the Government changed a forthcoming law on party funding this week.
The Political Parties and Elections Bill, expected to become law later this year, now requires anyone who donates over £7,500 a year to a party to be registered in Britain for tax purposes. Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who has repeatedly argued such a measure would not work, was forced to add the amendment after a long-running campaign by backbench Labour MPs and peers.
Lord Ashcroft, who is thought to have poured millions of pounds into Conservative target seats since the last election, has refused to clarify his tax status since he accepted a Tory peerage on the understanding that he would become
a British resident for tax purposes.
His donations are made through a string of companies he controls, and are not registered to him personally. But the new amendment challenges this arrangement by making it a criminal offence for a person to “cause an amount to be received” by a political party.
Gordon Prentice, Labour MP for Pendle and the original proposer of the ban, said: “Multimillionaires and others… will have to sign a declaration that they are a permissible donor, which will include a reference to their tax status. It will be a criminal offence for them knowingly to give an inaccurate or false declaration, and I say three cheers for that.”
Labour MPs and Lords have fought the Justice Secretary since March to try to ban donations from tax exiles. Mr Prentice’s original amendment, signed by 216 MPs, was defeated after it ran out of time in what he called a “filibuster” by Mr Straw.
But when Labour peer Lord Campbell-Savours tabled the same amendment in the Lords, peers defied a three-line whip to vote in favour of it.
Mr Prentice told Tribune that the law would still not do enough to restrict spending on the next general election. “While what happened yesterday is welcome, it has still come too late. It’s possible to put millions into constituencies and still be within the law.”
